Mechcommander Gold can be run on Windows 7 but you’ll likely have to follow a few steps to ensure it works on your machine. The first issue is installation, as the game uses a 16bit installer which is unsupported on 64 bit operating systems.

Freeware installation – Before you start, know that Mechcommander Gold has been released as freeware, so you can freely download ISOs for the game from the web. You can find freeware download links in the Mechcommander Gold freeware download post.

Installation from disc/ISO – Note you’ll still have to have the disc inserted or have the ISO mounted to run the game, unless you find a no-cd executable for the game:

Windows 7/Vista 32 bit – If simply running setup from the disc/ISO doesn’t work right away, right click on your cd/iso and select explore. Then set the following files to run in Windows 95 compatibility mode and attempt the installation again:_ISDL.exe
CPUID.exe
SETUP.exe

Windows 7/Vista 64 bit – 64 bit Windows does not support 16 bit installers such as the one for Mechcommander gold. There is a workaround though – create a directory named MCG (name is unimportant) and then manually copy the entire contents of your MCG disc/iso into this folder and start the game using MCX.EXE in your new directory.

Compatibility – To ensure that you don’t run into some common crashes and bugs associated with the game on Windows 7 you’ll want to follow these additional steps:

Create a shortcut to MCX.exe (if you don’t have one already).

Add the following compatibility tab settings to your MCX.exe shortcut:

If you’ve followed the above steps and are still having issues running Mechcommander Gold on Windows 7, please post in the comments below. To increase your chances of a solution being found include as much detail as possible (which version of the game you’re running, what operating system you have, what video card you have and steps to reproduce the issue). Screenshots are also very useful!

I dont have a problem with the launcher, it installs fine, the game playes the opening cinema fine,and when i start the missions, the briefings are fine. its just that when i click “start mission” the entire game crashes before it even starts to load the mission. help?

I just updated the writeup a bit. Depending on where you got it from you likely still have to have the disc inserted to run the game.

Most freeware download sites give you an ISO so you can just mount that and it will recognize it as your game disc. If you don’t want to do that, find a no-cd exe for the game and replace your original MCX.exe with the no-cd exe and run the game using that.

Followed all the steps and anytime I enter full screen the textures all become corrupt once again. Nothing I do seems to change it, and playing it in a tiny window doesn’t really seem to be a viable option. Any help would be appreciated.

I’m running Enterprise Windows 7×64 bit from the shortcut that you instructed to create with the necessary compatibility settings. And yeah I’ve tried to start the first mission quite a few times to test it and every time the corrupt textures carry over to the actual game.

I contacted Hannibal_805 by email about this issue. His game ended up looking like this. If you have the same problem here are some things you can try:

Attempt 1 – Turn off all other programs when you’re starting the game, especially things like skype and fraps that might conflict with the game display with pop-up and overlays.

Attempt 2 – Next, if you haven’t tried it already, toggle some of the compatibility options on and off in your shortcut. There may be a specific configuration of these settings other than the one I specified that will resolve this issue for you.

Attempt 3 – Switch to a basic Windows theme. Composite desktop themes often seem to be the cause of these issues. You can switch the theme in Control Panel\Appearance and Personalization\Personalization.

Attempt 4 – Download a different version of the game. If you got the game from a user created torrent there’s always a chance that some of the files are missing/corrupted. You can get a freeware version of the game directly from here.

If any of these attempts fix the issue for you please let me know. If not, you may be out of luck :( This seems to be a fairly rare issue (you are the only two that have reported it).

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Thanks for the reply! I did download from this site/ link to begin with, but am willing to try it again (I absolutely adore this game!). Do you have another idea if a corrupted install isn’t the issue? I have performed all recommendations in this article already, but when performing it for the first time, it is possible I copied something somewhere I shouldn’t have!

Just confirmed, it is related to the ‘l Resolution=3’ addition to the PREFS file that causes the crash… It seemed to work on Mission 1 but not Mission 2 or the Expansion campaign. I will try different resolutions to see how those behave…

Hey, so I tried ‘l Resolution=2’ and did not appear to have any issue. I am going to keep playing like this and will report back if I have further issue. The issues with resolution level 3 were immediate on the expansion campaign and the mini map had draw errors even when Mission 1 worked. Maybe it is my gpus? I have crossfired 7870s.

Very strange! Thanks for the investigative work. Could you by any chance post a screenshot of what you mean by mini-map draw errors? Also what is the native resolution of your monitor?

The only resolution related issue I’ve seen before is that setting the game resolution higher than what is supported by your monitor causes startup crashes. What you’re describing is a first!

Protostar1

May 15, 2014 at 4:22 pm

The draw error is only related to the “outline box” showing view area. Depending where you move, it resizes to very exaggerated proportions. Its almost like the resolution is too high to the extent the actual map (which the mini map is simulating) cant draw enough outside the movable area to compensate for the high resolution and view area. The mini map box appears fine on resolution 2.

Got some further details (tell me when to stop haha). Resolution 2 has been largely successful, but had a late mission fail on Op1 Mis5 (farms) and on the 3rd solo mission. Did not retry playing either. Maybe back to your corrupted files concern, but I did a fresh download and full copy/ install after my initial issues.

Maybe try to install from the other link? Also make sure your video card drivers and your directx are up to date. The inconsistent behaviour suggests either something wrong with the files or your drivers.

Please feel free to keep posting! You can never have too much information :)

I’ve been getting this error. I’ve tried adjusting the resolution to 2 and 3, but no luck. It was downloaded from the links listed at thegameengine, and I copied all the contents of the .iso (after mounting) to a folder. Any ideas?

What’s the native resolution of your monitor? Also does this crash happen when the game starts or when you open a specific map. If so, which map?

From the error "No .PDB file found" it sounds like there’s something fudged with your install.

How are you running the game? If you’ve created a shortcut make sure the shortcut points to the .exe in your copied folder (not your cd). It might also be worth comparing the CD contents with your copied folder contents to see if there’s anything that didn’t copy over.

Start with that and let me know how it goes.

Edit: You can also try forcing the game to run in Windowed mode to see if that helps by opening prefs.cfg and changing b DirectDraw=TRUE to b DirectDraw=FALSE. See http://mechcommander.co.uk/topic/6955196/1/ for more info.

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Hi, thanks for posting all the help. I’m running vmlite xp mode on 64 bit windows 7. Game works fine but can’t get it fullscreen. Can get vmlite to go full screen but the game stays as a really small window with a massive white border all the way round. Any ideas? Cheers

I’m having an issue that is not listed here on the comments yet.http://imageshack.com/a/img924/5356/rLRHPB.jpg
I couldn’t make a screenshot, so I recreated the screen in paint.net
I only get a glitched fraction of the screen in the top left corner that seems to have 1 fps. This applies to the titlescreen, opening video and (when I blindly click) the the briefing session. (german here. Trying my best to tanslate)
Sounds and music are there and it seems only the visuals are the problem here.
I remember playing it last year and it worked fine then. The only hardware change was the main harddrive to an SSD.
I can not recall what else I did different back then.
Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit
I tried various compatibility combinations. (95, XP, 98, 256 colors, admin, etc…) none of them worked.
Yes, I have downloaded it from three different sites, tried run it from the EXE and tried run it as virtual drive.

I have my original MCG CD, and have copied it to a folder on my Computer as described above. I have created a shortcut and moved it to my desktop and edited the preferences as detailed above. I am running Windows 7 Professional 6-bit and get the following error message immediately when attempting to run the game from the shortcut:

So, here is my issue. The game seems to run fine, no crashes or anything like that, but on full screen the entire game is off center. I’d take a screenshot, but when I do it comes out completely normal.

Basically, the right 20% of my screen is the black border, while the actual game screen seems centered to the left. For point of example, on the title screen it completely cuts off the M in ‘Mech’. This also means I can’t easily hit the tabs on the menus and other things that are on the left edge of the screen. I’ve tried changing almost all of the compatibility settings, and nothing seems to work.

Of note, this only happens when it is full screen. In windowed version it is fine.

The cinematics are failing to play, both opening and briefing. With briefing, it shows the guy’s face, but he doesn’t say anything, and just cuts the video. I’m running Windows 7 on an HP Probook 455 G3.

In both the original game and in a popular user-created campaign (the Xenocide/Bengal Lancers campaigns), I can play everything fine – until I get to the end of operation 3, mission 4. It forces the cutscene video with the “hold the line” bit, the good guy mechs are triumphant… and then, the game unceremoniously crashes to desktop. aborting the video does no good, still a crash to desktop. Seeing as how operation 4 exists, this kind of stinks.

So I have a fairly weird problem on my Win8 Dell Notebook: Game starts up fine, cinematics are fine, graphics are fine, input works fine but when I start the mission, Keyboard + Mouse shorts don’t work. I.e. F1 selects the right group, Space+click to get them to haul it somewhere or telling them at what range to engage does not.

Hi, I’ve looked through all the available help and I haven’t seen my problem yet. The game boots fine, there are some artifacts in the video but nothing big. When it gets to the main menu the screen starts rapidly flickering and does not stop even into mission. Pressing alt enter fixes this issue but it’s hard to play in the tiny window. Any help is appreciated.